Registry export all exported a corrupt file

[bgold12]

I recently started looking at the registry a bit (just to see how file
associations work, so that I could change some of them), and I tried
exporting a few registry branches as .reg files. It all worked well,
except when I tried exporting the entire registry, the output file
seemed to be corrupted or something; every other character was a NULL
character, and there were a few other odd characters that I don't
think should've been there. For example, here is the first line (I've
replaced the NULL characters with underscores):

ÿþW_i_n_d_o_w_s_ _R_e_g_i_s_t_r_y_ _E_d_i_t_o_r_ _V_e_r_s_i_o_n_
_5_._0_0_

I'm wondering why this happened.

Second of all, when I edited the output file in notepad, it didn't
show the NULL characters, nor did it show the first two weird
characters at the beginning of line 1. My second question is why/how
notepad is doing this, and is the first problem a problem with the
registry export function, or something else?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I recently started looking at the registry a bit (just to see how file
associations work, so that I could change some of them), and I tried
exporting a few registry branches as .reg files. It all worked well,
except when I tried exporting the entire registry, the output file
seemed to be corrupted or something; every other character was a NULL
character, and there were a few other odd characters that I don't
think should've been there. For example, here is the first line (I've
replaced the NULL characters with underscores):

ÿþW_i_n_d_o_w_s_ _R_e_g_i_s_t_r_y_ _E_d_i_t_o_r_ _V_e_r_s_i_o_n_
_5_._0_0_

I'm wondering why this happened.

Second of all, when I edited the output file in notepad, it didn't
show the NULL characters, nor did it show the first two weird
characters at the beginning of line 1. My second question is why/how
notepad is doing this, and is the first problem a problem with the
registry export function, or something else?

===============

There is no point in exporting more than some branch to a text file. This
file would be useless as a backup because there is no way to re-import it.
What was actually your point in exporting the whole registry?

The file you saw is probably in Unicode format and it seems that Notepad was
unable to cope with the format, perhaps because the file was too large. I do
not think that it was corrupted in any way.

 

[Etal]

I recently started looking at the registry a bit (just to see how file
associations work, so that I could change some of them), and I tried
exporting a few registry branches as .reg files. It all worked well,
except when I tried exporting the entire registry, the output file
seemed to be corrupted or something; every other character was a NULL
character, and there were a few other odd characters that I don't
think should've been there. For example, here is the first line (I've
replaced the NULL characters with underscores):

ÿþW_i_n_d_o_w_s_ _R_e_g_i_s_t_r_y_ _E_d_i_t_o_r_ _V_e_r_s_i_o_n_
_5_._0_0_

I'm wondering why this happened.

Second of all, when I edited the output file in notepad, it didn't
show the NULL characters, nor did it show the first two weird
characters at the beginning of line 1. My second question is why/how
notepad is doing this, and is the first problem a problem with the
registry export function, or something else?

You first use some, to us unidentified, text-viewer/-editor
that is not unicode-capable and it will then show the content as
having spaces every other character. You then open the exported
file in WinXP's Notepad, which is unicode-capable and then find
that the contents looks /normal/ .

So as you noticed, when you export using the Registry
Editor, when you save as the default *version 5* "Registration
Files (*.reg)" format the result is a Unicode'd file.
If you instead, in the 'Save as type' drop-down list, choose
to export to the *version 4* "Win9x/NT4 Registration Files
(*.reg)" format you will get a ANSI-coded file and so will work
in that first text-editor you used.